The Burdened Man
by thosedarndursleys
Summary: The Kournas Lake has long been a refuge for those in need.


**A/N:** Hi everyone! This was written for round 4 of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I, as beater 2 of the Caerphilly Catapults, chose to write about merpeople. For judging purposes, my final word count was 1,869. My optional prompts were:

5\. (quote) "Not all who wander are lost." (J.R.R. Tolkien)

10\. (setting) lake

14\. (word) frigid

The Burdened Man

 _Phortizo anthropos_. It becomes his name the moment his flesh touches the frigid waters.

The cloth that hangs around his man-tails has been rolled to the knotted junction half way up each limb. The strange, miniature fingers at the end of his tails are buried just below the water, and I can see tiny fish darting forward to feed on their flesh. He doesn't seem to notice, though, and continues to stare off with his arms intertwined around his torso.

His scarred extremities are bleeding scarlet-tinted sorrow into the ripples around him. It's caustic, and I can feel it gnawing on the surrounding current. I stay out far enough to keep myself from his sights, but I'm close enough to the surface to feel my hair bobbing at the edge of the wind as it pulls the lake water this way and that.

The Kournas has always been a lake of emotion, as many parts of Greece are. Its history is found in a father's attempted violation of his own daughter, and the earth's collapse in order to provide refuge for said daughter, who became the first water nymph this side of Crete. Merpeople—my people—are found all over the earth, but we are different from many of our brothers. We do not seek to lure sailors or to coexist with the human world. We simply wish to be left alone.

That is, until _phortizo anthropos_ broke the surface of my lake.

Now I can't look away.

Before the larger fish died out last season, our lake served as a refuge for both locals and tourists who were trying to escape the pressures of everyday life by casting out a line. This was especially prevalent before the Dark Power was vanquished those few autumns ago, but _phortizo anthropos_ is the first man to visit in many moons. Crescents beneath his eyes are nearly the same blue as the water around me, and his skin is pallid even in comparison to the frothy clouds above. I can feel pity thrumming through my navel at the sight of him. He is alone. He is burdened. He is _phortizo anthropos_.

I drift closer to his place at the bank, and I press an ear to the surface to let it absorb his muttered words. They're foreign—the harsh gutterals of the barbarians, rather than the flowing monemes of the Cretans—but I find myself able to follow along.

"…can't believe it," he's saying. "Three years, it's been. How have you been gone for three years?"

He continues to mumble something about flowers, apostles, solemnity, stones. I can't determine their context, and I have trouble keeping up. Only one of his words resonates within me: _gone_.

It seems that the absence of these things has brought an affliction upon _phortizo anthropos._ In all of my time in this lake, I have never seen a man so broken. Whatever form this solemnity took, it scarred this man far worse than the marred tissue around his face and limbs. It broke the stone; it sacrificed the flower and the apostle.

His voice tapers off, and I drift closer. He's lying on the shore now with his eyes closed. I begin to think he's fallen asleep, but then his shoulders jerk upward. I dart back a ways before he can take in the surrounding water.

He dips his fingers below the surface for a moment before propelling himself upward. I watch as his fleshy tails stumble up a nearby cliff that leads to the man-village. Remnants of his burdens float with me in the water. I feel his grief settle onto my shoulders.

— — — — —

The next time the moon rises, he's returned to his same spot on the bank. He hasn't bothered to tether his clothing this time, and it soaks in the frosted waters as he sits. The exposed skin has taken on a blue tint, much like my own tail. I move as close as I dare, willing my body to absorb the chill so that there's less for his.

His sorrow has lessened today, but there's more exhaustion in his aura. Humans react to time physically—their skin grows slack; their joints weaken; their aura wilts. It's different from the merpeople's development through time. Our minds deepen; our spirits grow more in tune to each particle of our environment, but our bodies remain the same. _Phortizo anthropos_ is even different from merpeople and men, however. I can feel the age of his essence with each ripple of the water. His allotment of time is shorter than any human I've ever seen, as if it's been fused with a far more finite species. From the set of his shoulders, I can see that he knows this, and somehow I know this is why he has yet to speak this evening. This man is worn. _Phortizo anthropos._

This time, he truly does fall asleep on the shore, and I toss a rounded shell at his stomach in order to rouse him. I feel the creaking junction of his bones as he stands. I watch him stumble.

— — — — —

He's not at the surface the following evening. The wind has scattered any trace of him from the night before, and I lie just below the surface, the closest to the shore that I've ever been.

I think back on his demeanor the last couple of nights: one night broken, the next, heavy-laden. I feel a significant desperation within him—he has been forced under the harsh currents of the human world, but he has not succumbed to them. _Phortizo anthropos_ has seen and lived the worst, but he has not become the worst.

 _Not all those who wander are lost_ , whispers a long-suppressed memory. I remember a fraught but fierce king wandering the earth, rising to power after facing the depths of humanity. Those words were for then, but they are also for now. _Phortizo anthropos_ may not have a direction, but he is not lost. I know that he will continue to wander until he finds due north.

A water-slicing howl jerks me from my musings, and I rear around to find myself faced with the foulest earth-creature I have seen in a thousand of earth's revolutions. Its greying fur is matted, its eyes dilated; frothy venom drips from his protruding fangs, which, while not nearly as sharp as my own, look strong enough to rip flesh from bone without any effort. Jagged claws tear grooves into the white sand beneath them, and the adjacent rocks echo back its wails.

With a sharp pivot, the beast lunges toward the nearby village, its sea-clay homes barely visible in the distance, but it takes only a few strides before stopping. It lets out a guttural howl before turning back to the lake, and then rounds toward the village again. In a moment, it's thrusting itself toward the water once more. After thrashing its head back and forth long enough to cause my own mind to spin, it looks down at its own appendages and clamps its teeth on a disjointed forearm. Hard.

My ears pick up following yelp from their place under the icy surface, and I watch as the disfigured wolf rips at its flesh and fur. Clumps of skin and tendon tumble out of its fangs and into the encroaching water. After a particularly vicious attack on its own abdomen, it flings itself into the Kournas. That's when I feel it.

The sorrow, the exhaustion.

 _Phortizo anthropos._

I should have known.

I watch in horror for another moment before making a decision. I dive below the surface and race back to my colony's dwelling, ignoring their Mermish calls as I round shell-beds and columns. I nearly swim head-on into passing eel as I make a sharp turn into the tribe father's personal store. I grab a handful of weeds and dart back out. I'll deal with the consequences later.

Supplies in hand, I thrust myself back to the surface and watch as the werewolf's fluids meld with the particles of my lifeblood. I will not bear another second of it. I propel myself through a patch of ice and above the border.

The beast stops as soon as I crest the surface. His darkened eyes focus on my own, and I feel a twinge of surprise seep into my waters. While my people choose not to use our alluring nature as a weapon, as our Siren brethren do, that does not mean that we cannot do so. The wolf's jaw remains slack, and his primal instincts pull him toward me just a bit. Good.

I do not sing, but I use the contours of my body and my connection with the Kournas to pull the beast to me. He comes willingly until he's elbow-deep in my depths. The frosted current is working to pull him from his stupor, and I watch as his gaze sharpens. I brace myself, but I cannot help but flinch when he lunges toward me.

I turn from his path and feel his matted fur brush across my breast, but I dart below the surface before he can reach me further. Out of his senses, he plunges down after me before rearing up with a choking howl as his instincts reject the water. I use that moment to propel the weed into his jaw. His choking draws it down his throat, and he gags in surprise. I grasp his paw and pull him below the surface. I watch as gills sprout below his jawline, thankfully where he had already clawed off the majority of his pelt. He thrashes below the water, his pupils dilating and his crippled form adjusting to its new buoyancy. While he's distracted, I dart toward the far end of the lake, within view but out of reach. He pivots and turns violently, the film of water softening his movements. He chases my gilled neighbors throughout the evening, and I propel another weed down his throat with every passing current. Finally, as I feel the morning air begin to move the surface, I watch his movements begin to slow and the gillyweed fade from his body. I approach as his fur begins to recede, and he jolts to life. He chases me to the shore, his limbs beginning to straighten. Just a length from the surface, he loses consciousness, and I grasp his wrist in order to complete the journey. I push him to his spot on the chilly lakeshore and drift to my place just out of sight. As he begins to rouse, I watch his wounds—the harsh bodily transformation of the gillyweed, combined with the lycanthropy transformation, has sent his body into overcompensation. I watch as his fresh marks begin to fade. I watch as the moonlight's flesh-deep evidence falls from his being. Even with my limited knowledge of the human body, I know that he will have fewer scars when he awakens. I know that his magical core is pumping vitality throughout his body, and I know that while he will still have his sorrow, _phortizo anthropos_ ' exhaustion will be considerably less.

I know I have only removed one burden, but I pray it is enough.


End file.
